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Hi All!
Are you able to sustain an action more than once in a round? Sustain calls out that if you sustain again it won't extend the duration even further, but if something has an effect on a sustain can you trigger that multiple times?
Examples:
Bless- Each sustain expands the area
Spiritual Armament- Each sustain triggers an attack
Leshy Glide- Each sustain moves 25ft forward and 5ft down
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Yes, you can sustain things more than once. It won't extend the duration farther - as noted. And it doesn't necessarily repeat the effect. Most effects that repeat every time they are sustained will say so. Many others say that they only have their effect the first time that they are sustained each round.
Also, be aware that most of those things that you referenced aren't actually sustained.
Spiritual Armament is sustained and will allow multiple attacks with it each round.
Floating Flame can also be sustained multiple times, but each creature can only take damage from it once per round. So a second sustain per round would best be used on a different enemy.
Bless itself is not sustained. It has a duration of 1 minute no matter if its radius is expanded or not - no sustaining needed. Also, the sustain action of expanding the radius is only allowed once per round because that is written into the spell's ability.
Leshy Glide is also not sustained. You can use that action multiple times per round for its listed glide distance.
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Good calls on those!
The Leshy Glide is what brought this question up- a character was fighting at the bottom of a pit after failing to scout ahead and the rest of the team was trying to climb down. Our Leshy was bad at climbing so the question came up if she could just do it 3 times a round to reliably be moving down 15ft. In my head I had it as a sustained action but it makes sense as just a normal one.
Bless I didn't realize the sustain wasn't needed for the time but I see that in the description. I'm glad I asked the question.
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Bless I didn't realize the sustain wasn't needed for the time but I see that in the description. I'm glad I asked the question.
Bless was a Remaster change.
Premaster Bless needed to be sustained, and increased the radius when you sustained it.
Remaster Bless got the 1 minute duration, with an option to spend an action to increase the radius. (And they made both the initial radius and the amount it expands much more generous.)
So you didn't misremember -- it used to work differently.
Pre-Remaster Bless also has a 1 minute duration with no need to sustain.
The difference is that the pre-Remaster Bless didn't have a name for its special concentrate action used to expand the radius. Remaster Bless now calls that action Sustain - which IMHO is a bad change because it causes confusion since the Sustain action of Bless doesn't actually sustain the spell.
People have been thinking that Bless is a sustained spell since at least 2020 and mostly because of colloquially calling its action to expand the radius 'sustain'.
Now that the action is officially called 'Sustain', that is probably going to just get worse.
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Pre-Remaster Bless also has a 1 minute duration with no need to sustain.
Whoa! Thanks for the correction.
Though I think there are several spells like that (with normal duration and Sustains doing something different). I also don't see much problem in this.
Other than Bane, I can't think of any. Doesn't mean that there aren't any though. One that I am aware of that is similar is Protective Wards. It also expands its radius every time it is Sustained. The difference is that the spell also has a Sustained duration, so you do have to Sustain it every round.
But no, it isn't an actual problem. It is a confusion problem. People who aren't reading carefully enough can end up running the spell incorrectly. Once someone notices and brings it up, the rest of the group should accept the correction without too much argument.
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Cool. That is quite a pile.
Hopefully with that being a more standard and common way of designing spells people will notice that the Sustain isn't mandatory to keep the spell going.